EDITORIAL – English version

The adventure of the Islamic State will have been for Islam as the Spanish war or the saga of the Che have been for socialism.

A grand heroic fresco, romantic and lethal at the same time, terrible and desperate… Of course subject to the different views of the implied parties.

With the intention of giving life to a dream, which only a few passionate ones wanted to believe in, eventually victims of the indifference of those who saw them die; because these latter ones have never adhered to the eminently political dimension of Islam, never really… Because they never had faith in the project of their prophet, never entirely…

Although, after Mosul, it is now Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State, that crumbles under the shelling of the Western armies, in a coalition to crush this too “radical” Islam, this “extremist” Islam… Now, as the “authentic” Islam takes its last breath, the Islam of the Salafists, the Islam of Mohamed, the Islam of the Qur’an… Probably the brotherhood of the parrots (as was written by Pierre Rimbert in Le Monde diplomatique to designate the dominant media stream) will put all of its talent at work to make the destruction of a world that is different to its own, as the victory of the good over the evil… Now, other wars linger on the horizon, in Syria and in Iraq. Regional wars that will not be entirely foreign one to the other.

In the north east of Iraq, as the ruins of Mosul still smoke, the banner of the Sunni revenge is raised against the Shi’a occupying forces, encouraged by Iran; some Christians call upon their brothers to take up arms and to demand independence for the Niniveh plain; and Kurdistan erects on its “borders” an earthen wall and trenches, against its new enemies, the “Arabs of Baghdad”.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad recovers the upper hand and gets ready to crush the last opposition strongholds, memories of the “Arab spring” suffering everywhere. With the blessing of Moscow and Tehran, al-Assad reconquers the “national” territory; and other Kurds fortify their grounds, placing most of their hopes in the American circumstantial ally, whose velleities to link up with the cold war era show their effect since three years in Ukraine.

The fires of the Islamist revolution are dying down in the Orient; a revolution whose third-worldly aspects only those could not see who willingly closed their eyes upon the profound motivations of the Caliphate. And the armies of the “Crusaders” lift their camp for another battle field.

The next great war of the 21st century has already started, in Western Africa, against another form of radical Islam, against yet another type of Islam…